today bebo and austin are making cookies. actually, they have been doing it for 2 days, double batches at a time. i myself made 5 batches today, taking about 4 hours from start to finish to do it. however, as i type this, monk and his son, mini-monk, are STILL making cookies. never send a man with O.C.D. to make toll house cookies.
for years i made the xmas cookies, sometimes as many as a thousand or more. in the last few years that i did them, i only did toll house cookies. however, the stress of doing them with bebo forced me to abandon cookie making with a vengence. he took over the making of cookies and i just carried them off to wherever they were going.
what would cause me to ditch the cookie making? it was bebo's absolute insistance that the cookies had to be exactly the right shape...what shape? hell, they are frigging toll house cookies! easy's way? you get a big scoop of them on the spatula and you grab a hunk of dough and throw it down on the cookie pan. bebo's way? each little cookie must be of uniform size and weight. they must be lined up properly spaced on the cookie pan. he would dip them out with a spoon...fingers are too messy and you can't make them even. then one year i think he went to the melon baller thing. this year he has "perfected" the whole system and, according to austin, it is much more efficient. he now is rolling them out in a long rope, which my son described so nicely as looking something like a long turd. then he cuts them evenly and puts them on the cookie pan and bakes them for exactly 9 minutes. my response was WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS, YOU IDIOT! DON'T YOU KNOW YOU CAN GO AND GET A ROLL OF TOLL HOUSE DOUGH FROM THE WAL-MART AND JUST CUT THEM AND GO?
he also refuses to put them on cookie cooling racks. instead, he takes towels and spreads them out over a table. each hot cookie is placed one by one in a neat little line, not touching each other. there they will remain for upwards of 3 or 4 hours, waiting to cool. we aren't talking just cool...we are talking stone cold. according to bebo, they cannot be touching each other in any form of warm before you put them up. i am not sure what earthshattering event will occur should cookies collide, but i let him go with it. when i was living with him, the cookie baking would have to cease when the whole table was filled. while i was trying desperately to get them put up and to make space for the new cookies, he was fighting me, saying we would just have to wait until they were cold. i would be swinging from the rafters, wanting the baking to be done, but monk would just say, no, and i would be left to the gnashing of teeth and wailing at high decibels. finally, for my own health, i decided that he should just do the friggin' cookies himself. in the end, he now takes 2 days to do what i would have done in one, but he seems to be happy. so is austin. sigh. i am not exactly sure who he bakes for, other than himself. in any case, i doubt anyone appreciates the huge exercise of perfection that goes into the baking...:)
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